Free Republic

Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands. The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not. The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads. “We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen...

The Energy Challenge When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing. That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new...

Interviews with architects, engineers and energy experts on Wednesday suggest that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to place wind turbines atop the city’s skyscrapers and bridges, as well as off the coastline of Queens and Brooklyn, would be complicated and expensive and barely begin to meet the growth in demand for electricity that is expected in the coming years. “The smaller turbines that he’s talking about almost don’t pay in terms of kilowatts per hour produced,” said Daniel Karpen, a Long Island engineering consultant who has studied the feasibility of wind power. “He’s going to need money to build them,...

Mayor Bloomberg is proposing a "green" plan that has the potential to drastically change the New York City skyline and shores. It's part of his effort to make New York the most energy efficient city in the nation. The mayor's "windmill power plan" is the boldest environmental proposal yet from the billionaire independent, who has been trying to make energy efficiency a legacy of his administration. Speaking at a major conference on alternative energy Tuesday night in Las Vegas, Bloomberg proposed putting windmills on top of city bridges, and skyscrapers, and turbines in the Hudson and East Rivers. In terms...

Wind farms may have an impact on local weather patterns. As environmental engineers have discovered, wind farm propellers create a lot of turbulence in their wake, mixing air up and down with effects that can be detected for miles... ...a large windmill array could influence the local climate, raising temperatures by about 2 degrees Celsius (about 4 Fahrenheit) for several hours. The rotating blades could also redirect high-speed winds down to the Earth's surface, boosting evaporation of soil moisture... ...At best, wind farms produce electricity at an efficiency rate of 30 percent, compared to a 70 percent efficiency rate from...

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats. To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this...

Usually when you argue with liberals, you can start winning right off the bat by denying the premise of their argument. On energy, their premise is that wind power is pure, clean energy, harnessing mother nature with no downside at all. After all it is just a breeze, which we like on hot summer days, and other than lifting loosely glued toupees and bad comb-overs, it is harmless. Right? Well we don't get wind power from pin-wheels. We get it from thousands of huge, industrial grade wind turbines, which, for the dim bulbs on the left, are machines.

Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens said on Thursday crude prices may soon fall as low as $110 a barrel amid falling gasoline demand, but should not sink below $100 because the United States depends heavily on oil imports. "I don't think it'll drop below $100," Pickens told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I would say $110 is where it might go, something like that." ~snip~ Pickens' hedge fund BP Capital, which manages about $7 billion in assets, sank about 35 percent in July, according to a report this week in the New York Post. Pickens declined to comment in...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called congressional Republicans who want up-or-down drilling votes “hand maidens of the oil companies.” Let’s call Pelosi what she is: House girl of the Big Wind boondogglers. Though she seemingly backtracked on labeling drilling a “hoax” this week, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don’t include massive government subsidies for eco-fantastical alternatives that have never panned out. Which brings us to Madame Speaker’s 2007 financial disclosure form. Schedule III lists “assets and ‘unearned income’” of between $100,001-$250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. - Public Common Stock.” Clean Energy Fuels Corp. is a natural gas...

T. Boone has re-invented himself as a green wildcatter. Can he finish what Al Gore started? T. Boone Pickens can't read his lines. Squinting at his teleprompter, he is posing in front of a mile-long ribbon of wind turbines, churning against an endless Texas sky. Pickens is in Sweetwater, a town of 12,000 that bills itself as the nation's wind-energy capital, to shoot a commercial urging Americans to put themselves on a new energy diet: cutting out imported oil—which costs $700 billion a year—in favor of domestically produced sources such as wind and natural gas. "Our dependence on foreign oil...

Ah so! It seems T. Boone Pickens is not the disinterested environmental pioneer that his ads make him out to be. Michelle Malkin exposes the grand scale corruption that is behind Nancy Pelosi’s desire not to drill for more oil. It seems that she has stock in companies that create and run wind farms – T. Boone Pickens companies. Though she seemingly backtracked on labeling drilling a "hoax" this week, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don't include massive government subsidies for so-called eco-alternatives that have never panned out. Which brings us to Madame Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure...

Wind Turbines Whip Up Health Fears By RICHARD COCKLE  BOARDMAN, Ore. — Sherry Eaton pulled into the driveway of her rural, high-desert home to see one of several giant wind turbines being assembled a half-mile away. "I started to cry," Eaton, 57, recalled of her first sight of the Willow Creek Wind Project in late July. "They're going to be hanging over the back of our house, and now there's the medical thing." "The medical thing" is new research suggesting that living close to wind turbines, as Eaton and her 60-year-old husband, Mike, soon will be doing, can cause sleep...

It’s what conservative bloggers are buzzing about: the financial relationship between Do-Nothing Nancy Pelosi and Big Wind pusher T. Boone Pickens. #dontgo reports that according to disclosure statements, “in May 2007 she invested in T. Boone Picken’s clean energy fuels corp., CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funs to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.�Follow the money.Get the whole scoop here and here. Know your eco-cronies.***Flashback: See-Dubya asks, “Why is T. Boone Pickens...

At first glance, the energy proposals of Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens for wind power and increased gas usage sound good. "We can't drill our way out of this crises"; I happen to disagree with this statement. We still need to drill to make ourselves "independent from foreign oil." But the real issue is what is behind the clamor to expand wind power in lieu of increasing oil drilling. To understand this you have to read between the lines. Not only does Pickens' firm, BP capital, have significant investments in natural gas, but last June he announced plans to build...

Boone Pickens may be a fine man, and has played a colorful and useful role on the American stage for decades. But his "energy plan," which he's spending a fortune to promote on cable TV, is not a plan. Asserting that something would be good to do is not "a plan." Saying how to do it is "a plan." By this standard, what the legendary oil man is devoting $58 million to pitch hardly amounts to a decent slogan. He would replace natural gas in electricity production with wind, and use the natural gas to power cars. He fails to...

T. Boone Pickens has a series of commercials running so often on TV and radio that you can’t avoid them. The basic idea he is selling is to replace gasoline in cars with natural gas, and replace natural gas in electricity production with wind farm produced electricity. The idea won’t work, but Pickens will reap more millions from government subsidies until America figures that out, just as we have figured out that Biofuels made from foodstuffs was a very bad idea.

...developers are looking to build more than 100 wind turbines taller than the Statue of Liberty, side by side, on 18 miles of the George Washington National Forest. FreedomWorks, a company with projects in four states, wants to generate electricity for the power-hungry Washington area and beyond, despite concerns about disturbing wildlife, spoiling untouched lands and creating noise and light pollution. As the United States searches for ways to lessen its dependency on foreign oil, wind energy is getting a second look in states such as Virginia that had not embraced it. The national push, along with new state financial...

COMMENTARY: T. Boone Pickens is being lionized for his efforts to legislate a transformation to "eco-friendly" wind energy. We need to "overcome our addiction to foreign oil," he insists, by harnessing wind to replace natural gas in electricity generation, and using that gas to power more cars and buses. If Congress would simply "mandate the formation of wind and solar corridors," provide eminent domain authority for transmission lines, and renew the subsidies for this energy, America can make the switch in a decade. Mr. Pickens' $58-million media pitch makes good ad copy, but his policy prescriptions would bring new energy,...

What's in store for America when most of its electricity is generated by the sun and wind? Trouble, turmoil and tyranny. With more than 125 wind farms, England is many years ahead of us when it comes to alternative power. But it has just as many NIMBYs per capita as America, and theirs detest wind farms. A 2007 government-commissioned study found upward of three-quarters of people living within 1.2 miles of "condor Cuisanarts" say the loud whooshing sound the blades make is ruining their health and quality of life. But their biggest complaint was about falling property values. More than...

Perhaps it would clarify the wind issue if some basic facts were understood. The term is WECS: Wind Energy Conversion Systems, not "farms," "ranches," or "parks." The structures are industrial-scale turbines. WECS will produce small amounts of energy with an efficiency range averaging 35 percent at most locations. WECS in Kansas in operation or under construction have the ability to produce 1,014 megawatts of electricity at maximum production; less than a quarter of that electricity stays in Kansas. WECS will not replace conventional coal, gas or nuclear plants, because wind energy is intermittent, unpredictable, unreliable and expensive and cannot be...

If you watch cable TV, chances are you've seen an ad promoting T. Boone Pickens' plan for reducing the vast sums we're spending on imported oil. Hearts quickened in the Democratic Party because Mr. Pickens says in the ad: "this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of." That's what Democrats say when they block drilling off our coasts and in Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. But the budding romance cooled when Mr. Pickens made it clear he supports lifting those drilling bans. Mr. Pickens' plan has two key elements. The first is to build a massive series of...

Gore’s Got Another Idea by: Ben Giles, July 28, 2008 Al Gore has a challenge for Americans: produce 100 percent of the nation’s electricity with alternative energy within ten years. At a packed Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Constitution Hall on July 17, the former Vice President spoke on behalf of the We Campaign, an extension of his organization The Alliance for Climate Protection. Beyond his usual call for a drastic reaction to the global climate crisis, Gore argued that an end to our reliance on carbon-based fuels would solve more than climate change. “When you connect the dots,...

Centrica warns on wind farm costsCentrica, one of the UK's biggest energy generators, has warned that the prospect of making money from wind farms is looking "marginal". The company says that the rising cost of off-shore wind farms could end up ruining the government's renewable energy targets. The comments come a week after Shell withdrew from a project that was set to become the world's largest wind farm. The government wants 33 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity built by 2020. Mr Sambhi, Centrica's director of power business unit, says the firm is still planning to build three new wind farms...

Who knew a “free� source of energy could be so expensive? The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) recently estimated that billions of dollars in investment will be needed to transmit wind-generated electricity from the areas of Texas most suitable for wind generation — West Texas and the Panhandle — to the areas of the state that need energy the most — the I-35 corridor and the upper Gulf Coast. These costs will be borne by Texas ratepayers. How did this happen? Subsidies, incentives, and renewable energy mandates have paved the way for Texas’ wind-energy boom. Today, Texas leads the...

Clean and Green no longer gets "Green-e" stamp of approval. In dozens of shops and restaurants around Boulder, customers can find signs proclaiming "This Business Is Wind Powered" above the logo for local company Clean and Green. The whole idea may strike some customers as counter-intuitive -- after all, where are the windmills? Clearly, not on the roof, not in the yard and not even in the city limits. It's possible the windmills aren't even in Colorado. Clean and Green is one of many brokers in the United States selling renewable energy credits, or RECs, which allow customers with no...

Give Americans a chance and they'll transform the world. These links go to two articles and video clips about some problems and the Americans that are solving them. Pretty cool stuff. Windbelt Stoves for the Refugees

N.Y. utility scrapping ocean wind park Long Island's utility company intends to dump plans to build a $700 million wind energy park in the Atlantic Ocean, a top official said. "It's just too expensive," Long Island Power Authority Chairman Kevin Law told The Associated Press. "It's not going to work. This is an economically based decision. We didn't even have to consider environmental or aesthetic concerns." The utility's board of directors will meet next month to officially vote on scrapping the project. Initially popular with environmental activists, politicians and residents, the project, which was to include 40 turbines in an...

Ventus Energy, which is building a new wind farm in West Cape near O'Leary, is trying to negotiate a longer-term share of green credits, but P.E.I. isn't willing to give them up. There's no market for green credits yet, but when that market becomes a reality it could generate another $10 million a year for the West Cape wind farm. The province hopes to use green credits to generate revenue from wind energy projects in the same way other provinces get royalties from oil and gas developments. P.E.I. is the only province to claim ownership of the wind in this...

Really funny stuff. http://youtube.com/watch?v=LEaOkhWOZ1A

...The sweeping votes reflected widespread bipartisan support for extending expired tax breaks, including the research and development tax credit for businesses, sales tax deductions for people in states without income taxes, the tax deduction on college tuition, a tax credit for hiring welfare recipients and others facing difficulties finding jobs and tax credits for alternative energy producers and purchases of solar energy equipment by homeowners and businesses.

In Laasow, about 20 km west of Cottbus, Brandenburg, the FL 2500/2,5MW, developed by the engineers of W2E Wind-to-Energy on the 160 meter SeeBa world-record-tower, will now produce green energy. The estimated output of about 7 million kWh corresponds to the consumption of about 1,800 4-person households. High hub heights stand for steady and regular winds. Thus, it will be possible to render sites profitable which are not at 100 meter hub height.

Wind-power site takes shape at crest of N. Maine ridge MARS HILL, Maine --At the crest of a mountain ridge that hugs northern Maine's border with Canada and shares names with the potato-growing town below, what will become New England's biggest wind-power development so far is quietly taking shape. A road following the spine of Mars Hill Mountain has been blazed through the thick woods and now connects in dot-to-dot fashion 28 flattened sites where 262-foot high turbines will rise. A contract is to be awarded soon to pour foundations for the turbines, which are being built in Canada. Once...

The military is studying whether the turbines interfere with its radar systems. Some say the study is politically motivated. More than $500 million in wind farm developments in Minnesota face potential delays because of a federal directive to study the effects of wind turbines on military radar installations. At least four wind projects in the state—and more than a dozen elsewhere in the Upper Midwest—have been temporarily denied safety permits from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Instead, the FAA has sent notices of "presumed hazard" that effectively prohibit construction until the wind farm proposals are reviewed further... Congress ordered the...

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., has a new ally in his effort to torpedo an environmentally friendly "wind farm” off the coast from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis – the Pentagon. The Defense Department has begun a study to find out if wind turbine projects designed to produce energy could interfere with military radar – even though wind farms are already operating in military radar areas. The study is threatening not only the Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, but other wind farm projects around the country as well. The study was inserted in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act...

OAKLAND, Md. — Dan Boone has no doubt that his crusade against wind energy is the right way to protect the Allegheny highlands he loves. Let other environmentalists call him deluded at best, traitorous at worst. He remains undeterred. For four years or more, Mr. Boone has traveled across the mid-Atlantic to make every argument he can muster against local wind-power projects: they kill birds and bats; they are too noisy; they are inefficient, making no more than a symbolic contribution to energy needs. Wind farms on the empty prairies of North Dakota? Fine. But not, Mr. Boone insists, in...

ALGOMA, Wis.The blue-green waters of Lake Michigan stretching to the horizon. "I'll fight this every way I can," said Algoma alderman Ken Taylor, chairman of the city's marina committee. "The beautiful view we have would be destroyed" The turbines would be huge, towering as high as 400 feet with blade spans wider than a football field The payoff would come in increased energy production, Mr. Musial said. Winds over water are generally stronger, less turbulent and more consistent than on land. "Offshore machines can make about twice as much as onshore," Mr. Musial said. "It's a potentially big resource for...

...A group of 69 [Mass.] state legislators, ...earlier this month signed a letter to Congress opposing a Kennedy-backed amendment that would grant Governor Mitt Romney unilateral authority to kill the electricity-generating wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound. Kennedy's effort to sink the project with an amendment tacked on to a pending Coast Guard authorization bill has met with opposition from fellow Democrats in Congress and drawn the wrath of his usual allies in the environmental movement. But the heavy weather now coming at him at home highlights just what a raw nerve Kennedy has hit with his stand. ``We've listened...

Ted Kennedy has reportedly dropped his long-running blocking of the turbine wind farm that was proposed for Nantucket Sound in 1997. The turbines were estimated to be able to supply Cape Cod with most of their electricity needs. He is reported to have said that he will allow the Coast Guard to decide whether it should be built. The Coast Guard decides such things? Call me cynical, but it seems more likely that he has secured assurances rom others that they will block the wind farm for him.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration and two influential senators weighed in Friday against a provision that would block a 130-turbine wind farm off Cape Cod, where some of Washington's most powerful have vacation retreats. The wind farm, which would be located in Nantucket Sound about six miles off shore, has been a focus of controversy for five years. Developers won favorable environmental reviews and hoped to have it completed in 2009. A provision tucked into a bill authorizing activities for the U.S. Coast Guard would give Massachusetts' governor a veto over the project, although the turbines would be located in...

Fans of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy have long argued that he has fought the good fight ... But today, he is defending the indefensible: special interest legislation, tucked into a Coast Guard authorization bill, that would give Gov. Mitt Romney the power to veto the proposed Cape Wind energy project, even though it would be in federal waters. The project... more than five miles offshore of Cape Cod. The equivalent of burning 113 million barrels of oil per year. Proponents of Cape Wind say it is an important source of alternative, renewable energy, and it has the backing of such...

Given to environmentalist lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose fight for "green" energy apparently stops as soon as the results might spoil his view. Kennedy penned an irate New York Times op-ed in December, condemning the proposed building of wind turbines around the Nantucket Sound. While Kennedy criss-crosses the country in his jet-fuel-burning private plane stumping for alternative energy sources, he wants an exception for his own backyard. Greenpeace spokesman Chris Miller was not pleased, saying: "It's about a vision for healthy oceans, not the view from the Kennedy compound."

The infamous environmental group Greenpeace is targeting Sen. Ted Kennedy for opposing a wind farm in the Nantucket Sound because it would interfere with the view from his Hyannisport mansion. Greenpeace is launching a nationwide TV ad campaign against Kennedy, with spots that portray the Massachusetts Democrat as Godzilla. The Cape Cod Times reports: "In the 30-second spot, a cartoon Kennedy looms over the water like a Japanese movie monster, pounding wind turbines as they sprout from the water, and barks, 'I might see them from my mansion on the Cape.'" Kennedy's nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a leading...

No politician in America has a darker history with the waters off Martha's Vineyard than Senator Ted Kennedy. The Chappaquiddick Kid has been leading a three-year old battle to stop a windmill energy farm. A Boston company proposed building 130 wind turbines over a 24 square mile area off the Massachusetts coast. The wind turbines would provide three-quarters of Cape Cod's energy needs and nearly two percent for all of New England instead of relying on coal burning power plants. Greenpeace supported the idea. Yet big-time environmental liberals, the Chappaquiddick Kid, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and the befuddled Walter Cronkite oppose...

Opponents of a plan to build the first offshore U.S. wind farm in Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts were a step closer on Friday to blocking the $900 million project. Negotiators in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate agreed late on Thursday to give Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney the power to block a plan by Cape Wind Associates LLC to put 130 giant wind turbines near the resort islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Backers say the project could generate enough electricity for most of Cape Cod and nearby islands. Opponents include wealthy residents with yachts and shorefront property near...

There is a rich irony in watching Senator Ted Kennedy join forces with Representative Dan Young of Alaska to stop a windmill power-generating project in Nantucket Sound. Rep. Young –conservative Republican and chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee – often opposes environmental proposals. His ranking from the League of Conservation Voters is zero. Mr. Kennedy’s ranking is 95 percent. The Cape Wind project they are fighting would place 130 windmills near the center of Nantucket Sound, perhaps seven or eight miles due south of Hyannis Port, Cape Cod, where the Kennedys’ famous seaside property it situated. Messrs. Kennedy...

CRITICS OF PROPOSED US offshore wind farms have recently lauded efforts to develop deep-water offshore wind energy technologies that would allow wind farms to be built far from shore. They suggest that advances in research and development are proceeding at such a rapid pace that thousands of wind turbines could soon be operating off the northeast coast without encroaching on anyone's view or posing any threat to the environment. Clarification about the current state and potential of deep-water offshore wind energy appears timely. The US Department of Energy estimates the wind energy potential off the United States coast to be...

One of the nation's largest wind farms will soon be constructed... 200 giant turbines will dot the high plains landscape over a 30 square-mile area. Some will stand more than 300 feet in height. The new wind farm is expected to generate enough electricity to power more than 90-thousand homes. Headed by Greenlight Energy Inc. of Charlottesville, Virginia. Xcel Energy plans to purchase electricity from the project.

A plan to build what could become the first large offshore wind farm in the United States would be effectively killed by a proposed amendment to a Coast Guard budget bill now making its way through Congress, people on both sides of the issue say. The amendment, offered by Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, would prohibit new offshore wind facilities within 1.5 nautical miles of a shipping lane or a ferry route. That would rule out construction of the installation, proposed for Nantucket Sound. The budget bill awaits action in a House-Senate conference committee. The developer, a private company...

CHEYENNE, WYOMING, USA -- Terra Moya Aqua Inc. (TMA) is ready to go into production of a new vertical-axis wind turbine design that resolves some of the shortcomings that have plagued the traditional propeller design. While many of the new design features are superior to the familiar propeller, Ron Taylor, who is the inventor of the new vertical design, as well as founder, Chief Operations Officer, and chairman of the board for Terra Moya Aqua Inc., is modest in his approach. He does not see his vertical turbine supplanting the existing propeller infrastructure, but rather views it as supplementing the...

Even for Greenpeace, a group known for turning high-seas drama into political statement, the foray into the Nantucket Sound wind farm debate has played like perfect theater. Take, for instance, the picture-postcard morning of Aug. 17, when a pair of Greenpeace motorboats surrounded a schooner crammed with wind farm opponents, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It was a made-for-TV face-off that, indeed, was reported on the national news that night. But for Greenpeace, a $360 million organization that spends about $3.3 million each year on U.S. campaigns, ongoing efforts for the Cape Wind project transcend interrupting a Kennedy sail. Today,...